culture
Psalm 120:1 following Psalm 119 (and its 176 verses) is like a tiny fern sitting next to a giant kauri (tree). And the stark contrast doesn’t stop with size. All but two verses (I think I am right on that one – my grandma used to tell me it was every verse, but she was…
READ MOREI am enjoying my longest stay in the USA since I was a student here 25+ years ago. I have been speaking at the annual missions’ conference of a church set in the cornfields of NW Ohio – where my father-in-law is pastor emeritus. The church has been supporting Barby’s family in India for 95…
READ MOREPolitical elections are in the air. Both in the USA & here in NZ. I am wrestling with what I always wrestle in these seasons. Ethics. Neither the Right nor the Left is ever totally compelling for me. This is frustrating. Four documents are open in front of me to help guide me. (a) One…
READ MOREIf your shelves are lined with books with names on their spines like Burke, Pagitt, Ward, Chalke, and Tomlinson… If the links on your laptop suggest you connect readily to Miller, Bell, McLaren, Rollins and McManus… Then you owe it to yourself – and to those you influence- to read Kevin DeYoung & Ted Kluck,…
READ MOREI have a fair amount of Americana in me – having been educated at an American boarding school (Woodstock School, India) and then at an American theological college(Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Chicago). So when the presidential elections come around I struggle to shrug off compulsive behavioural patterns! 2008 has proved the biggest struggle of all.…
READ MOREIs anyone else provoked by this full page picture in New Zealand newspapers this week?The caption, presumably spoken by this African woman, reads: “In New Zealand many women are denied some human rights that I enjoy”. I know they are trying to push the boundaries in order to expose the despicable that is kept hidden…
READ MOREI guess it was a kind of madness. Hiring a car in Morocco seemed brave enough – but selecting one without air-conditioning in 46-48 degree weather and then covering 1345kms over two days? Oh – and just to refresh us for the trip we spent the night before listening to scaffolding poles being dropped one…
READ MOREBarby and I have just completed five days in Denmark – the land of Lego, Soren Kierkegaard, Hans-Christian Anderson, a royal princess from Tasmania, Vikings, inflammatory political cartoons, Hamlet, Babette’s Feast, and those industrious windfarms (while 15kms away Sweden positions a nuclear powerplant!)I was attending the biennial meetings of a global scholarly society of teachers…
READ MORELong-time-no-write … because Barby and I find ourselves in Copenhagen for a conference (more on that later) with the flights over here providing the opportunity for watching some movies. We’ve come a long way from The Sound of Music, a linear story (beginning at the beginning and progressing to the end) with basically a single…
READ MOREHere are ten reasons why you should have a garage sale in order to raise money to buy this book for every Christian young adult you know. Timothy Keller, The Reason for God; Belief in an Age of Skepticism (Dutton, 2008). Keller is pastor of a church in Manhattan. One over-indulgent (!) Keller fan has…
READ MOREAbout Me
the art of unpacking
After a childhood in India, a theological training in the USA and a pastoral ministry in Southland (New Zealand), I spent twenty years in theological education in New Zealand — first at Laidlaw College and then at Carey Baptist College, where I served as principal. In 2009 I began working with Langham Partnership and since 2013 I have been the Programme Director (Langham Preaching). Through it all I've cherished the experience of the 'gracious hand of God upon me' and I've relished the opportunity to 'unpack', or exegete, all that I encounter in my walk through life with Jesus.